This website is dedicated to unpacking the works and world of British author Nevil Shute.
It was founded on the 100th anniversary of the publication of his first novel, Marazan in 1926.
My name is Andrew and I live in New Zealand. I have university qualifications at both undergraduate and postgraduate level studying Political Science, Philosophy, Peace & Conflict analysis, Business, Accounting – and Music.
I have a lifelong passion for sailing and aviation, which is what initially drew me to Shute’s books which tend to feature one or both of these fields prominently.
My work experience has included such varied things as
- ship’s crew
- insurance underwriter
- music video director
- medical administrator
- event planner
- hotel manager
- tour bus driver
- composer
- magazine editor
- recording studio engineer
- film critic
- pool technician
- election management
- small business entrepreneur
- warehouse forklift operator
- orchestra manager
- SCUBA instructing
- video game designer
- cabinet-maker
- and Adventure tourism guide in some remote corners of New Zealand and Australia.
Not to mention, writing code for a web blog or two.
One of my big goals in life is to publish a scholarly book about Nevil Shute’s works (his novels, plus some other surviving material).
My one-sentence thesis is this:
I believe all his works can and ought to be read as merely chapters of one larger work of political and moral philosophy.
However, irrespective of whether that proposed book could be supported by the free market, or whether I have to walk it down the road of Doctoral study at a university instead, (or do it for free on my own for the next thirty years), there is a huge amount of basic research leg-work that needs doing. Mostly this means compiling lists of characters, locations, plots and subplots and so on, key themes, and especially instances of books mirroring the author’s real life experience. There is no shortage of ground to cover here, and that is before we even touch the crunchy questions of the individual and the state, the private and the public good, and etcetera.
I intend for this website to be a place where I collect my musings, preliminary findings, preparations and groundwork for deeper analysis, and assemble the largest reference library I can.
But readers beware it may also end up being a load of
“Here is a list of all the instances of the author being weirdly obsessed with what his characters eat for breakfast, comma, used as proxy indicator of socio-economic status, question mark?”; or
“How many negative references are made to rising income tax per book plotted against Time”, for example.
These chunks of raw data aren’t particularly meaningful as individual webpages, but they are the building blocks that scholarly research can mortar together into something more elegant.
So if I am assembling this huge library of data for myself, why not share the journey?